


Bleed out, breathe in

by Music2Muse



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Catharsis, F/M, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 08:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18517882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Music2Muse/pseuds/Music2Muse
Summary: Quentin walks through a door. Eliot is patient.





	Bleed out, breathe in

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I cried. A lot. And this whole finale could have been done better. But, I guess, it could have been done worse. Here's what I made out of what we were given.

There was a long moment of darkness as Quentin passed through the doorway. Through a fucking veil. He could almost hear JK rolling in her grave at the unliscensed use of her imagery. There was a train, too. God, even a nice little talk with a wise figure, even if the lack of antagonist barbs left him almost as shaken as the fact that he was Fucking Dead.  
But yeah, the darkness.  
It didn't stretch on into eternity. It didn't even give him a moment to catch his breath from the most recent crying jag, which would have prepared him better for when he opened the door of the hut.  
Or maybe it was a cabin?  
It was intimately familiar, whatever the term. He'd rebuilt enough of it, keeping winter winds and summer storms at bay through half learned charms and rough hewn logs. This whole home has his blood, sweat, and tears sunk into every wall, blanket, and ceramic mug. He knew it and it knocked the breath clean out of him.  
It was home and he never thought he'd lay eyes on it again.  
Herbs hung in the corner, woolen blankets that he always threw to the other side of the bed because they made him abominably itchy lay over a cedar chest that he'd painted himself one long summer evening when tiles and patterns made him lose his mind to look at anything else. There was a bowl in the corner that had broken when 6 year old feet had moved faster than a 6 year old body could handle, and half of the pantry ended up on the ground in a rain of rough shards and frantic fathers.  
Teddy had cut his hand and that was the first time that Quentin had seen Eliot cry over him since Arielle had died. Quentin had thrown out the bloody pieces as a quivering Teddy asked his dad what was wrong in a tiny voice. He was too brave for his age.  
It was a dumb looking bowl, wobbly and the color of fresh shit, as Eliot liked to say. But Quentin was happy with his first try and knew it's ugliness would prompt help for the second attempt. It did and also sparked a half hour debate about the quality of Whoopi Goldberg movies. It was good to see it again after so long, and it brought something rising to the surface that Quentin hadn't felt in 40-some years. "Teddy!" Quentin called, not loud but urgent, a tone that children know to follow home. "Teddy, where are you!?"  
"Quentin?" Just around the corner, in the limited privacy the small home provided, a mound of blankets shifted and writhed, and a mess of reddish gold hair burst from them tangled and riotous and beyond belief.  
Quentin took a gulping half sob of air that made his chest ache as he stumbled towards one of the lost loves of his life. This could not be real. "Ari? Arielle, oh my God... What? How long have you been here...?"  
Before he could make it all the way over Arielle was up and had her hands on his shoulders, grounding him. "Quentin, take a breath, love. I'll answer everything, just take a breath before you pass out."  
Quentin took another great gulp of air and tried to hold it in his lungs for a ten count this time, as his arms came around to hold her and bury his face in the warm nook between her neck and shoulder. She was warm, even in the heat she was buried beneath a million blankets. Quentin and Eliot never knew how she managed it but her toes were always cold and she always ended up in their shared bed, cocooned in blankets and hunkered like the world was ending cold. Her husbands rolled to the outside of the bed in self defense more often than not, just to keep from overheating in the summer, and most of spring and fall, too. She sat pretty in the middle of their arms during the coldest part of the winter, the only time she was ever warm during those harsh months.  
Given the cold that settled into her lungs and the shakes that made her bones rattle, they were glad that they were able to give her the warmth she needed while they could.  
"I hope you were ok without us, Ari." Quentin muttered, after a shaky silence, unable to draw back enough for clear speech. He didn't want to think of her being lonely. "I didn't think I'd see you again. Thought you'd find someone else."  
Arielle pushed him back enough to see his face. "Why, because you came after me? Time doesn't really matter in death, not that I've seen, at least."  
"No I mean what Eliot and I did didn't really happen? I think? Margo messed with stuff and we never went back... And the Mosaic was finished by someone else, I think. We never actually met you."  
"I remember you, Quentin, and I love you. And I remember a few years that I lived on my own, years where you should have been. I brought peaches to the man that was there before you showed up. He stayed around a lot longer without someone to pick up his burden, but he left too. I'm not sure who finished it, baby. That part of the story was after me both times. But I met you, too. And we lived our lives. I'm glad I met you."  
Quentin sat heavily on the the bed, pulling Arielle down next to him, shoulder to shoulder as they leaned on each other, two houses falling down. "So... Teddy happened?"  
His wife and the mother of his child smiled. "Yeah, baby. Teddy happened. He loves you and his dad and remembers you just fine. We can go and see him, everybody's connected here. We don't do much, and time doesn't really seem to pass quite right, but your Teddy is just down the road with his girls."  
This was everything. It was fucking everything he thought he'd lost for good. His home that he'd never made, his wife he'd never met, and his son he thought he'd never brought into this world. There had been an open pit in his gut, boarded over with tragedy and urgency, that he'd been pushing distractions over for over a year. He knew if he had listened to the thin wind whistling up through the boards he would lay down and never get back up. He would find that quiet, dark, bordered place in his mind that Julia's mind game forever ago had brought to his attention, and lay down there and never get up, ever again.  
So he hadn't thought about it. They hadn't existed and there was no way to re-ring that bell, so he pushed through. Eliot didn't want him? Well he existed and that would be enough, proof of concept be damned. It would just have to be e-fucking-nough. There were crises to handle, anyways.  
So he handled them and now, finally he had gotten to the point where he had fixed what he needed to and could lay it all down, move the boxes and peel up the boards, and that pit was gone. Maybe that was what Penny 40 meant. He could handle it all now that he was whole again.  
Arielle had given him time to process but she had something still she wanted to say, he could see it in her face.  
"So we should go see Teddy, then. Let's... Yeah we should do that. Is he..." Quentin stuttered out.  
"He's not far, but there's someone else who just showed up, too. I think you'll want to see him as well. It's on the way, baby, and we have all the time." Her face was shining with joy to give him this gift. "Your dad's just around the corner and he's gotten rather insistent that I tell him the moment you come through. I think he missed you or something." She teased gently, brushing Quentin's hair out of his face and pulling him to his feet.  
He let himself be pulled to the door and walked a couple steps to a shifting Mosaic, colorful and bright. It was complete and ever shifting and beautiful and Quentin just needed one more thing to make it perfect.  
He looked back to his home, the closed door and waiting feeling of an empty house. Arielle squeezed his hand, pulling it up to her heart. "Don't worry, it won't be long. It only felt like a couple weeks before I heard you come in. Summer hasn't even passed yet. He'll be here before you know it."  
Quentin nodded jerkily, he could wait, he was patient like that. And he didn't want Eliot to show up too soon, he was sure there was a lot to do up top, anyways. He kissed Arielle's hand, relishing the sweet smell of peaches, as he let her lead him down the garden path of his home, family before him and only love to come.

**Author's Note:**

> There's some catharsis for me, at least. This was unbeta'd because I just needed some way for this to be happy in some way. I hope this might help someone else, but there it is. Pray hope, my lovies, that Quentin is living out a Daniel Jackson fantasy and will back before we know it. Fucking white male protagonist, my entire ass.


End file.
